JOHANNESBURG - Gauteng police are investigating the possibility that two schoolgirls who were found dead in Soweto yesterday were part of a satanic ritual after the discovery of razor blades and burnt black candles next to the pair's bodies.

The bodies of the girls, aged 15 and 16, were discovered in Dobsonville, Soweto yesterday morning.

One of the girls allegedly told her friends she would be accepted into a satanic group if she sacrificed the life of someone close to her.

Fellow pupils at George Khosa Secondary School say they saw the two girls leave the school grounds with two boys on Tuesday.

They believe the boys are part of a satanic group.

Police have confirmed the Occult Related Crime Unit has been called in to investigate the case as there is speculation the attack was part of a "soul selling" ritual.

A relative of one of the victim's says she can't describe the pain knowing there is a possibility that her young niece was killed as part of a "sacrifice”.

Two 16-year-old teenage boys accused of killing two Soweto schoolgirls, allegedly as part of a satanic ritual, are expected to appear in the Protea Magistrates Court this morning.The bodies of 15-year-old Chwayita Rathazayo and 16-year old Thandeka Moganetsi were discovered on Wednesday morning by a community member who was passing by a field in the Dobsonville area.

The police’s Neville Malila says the boys were arrested at the George Khosa Secondary School yesterday, which is the same school which the victims attended.

Police are investigating the possibility the girls were killed as part of a satanic "soul selling" ritual because razor blades and burnt black candles were found near their bodies. Classes were suspended at the school yesterday as pupils, teachers and religious leaders from different churches gathered to pray for the families of the two teenagers.

Relatives say they last saw the girls leaving for school on Tuesday morning.

One of the victims’ friends saw the girls leave the school with both boys on Tuesday afternoon.

One of the girls allegedly told her friends she would be accepted into a satanic group if she sacrificed the life of someone close to her.

The Occult Related Crimes Unit has been called in to investigate the case.

Meanwhile, Rathazayo’s relatives say they will be in court today to face her alleged killers.

Her cousin says they are hopeful they will find out the circumstances which led to the grisly crime.

“We are hopeful we will find out what happened and are also happy police arrested the boys so quickly.”

Thanks semper. I didn't know about that case, though the name of 'Donker' Jonker is familiar. He pops up whenever there's an occult murder, and there are quite a few (just the fact that there's an Occult Crimes Division speaks volumes).

JOHANNESBURG - South African Democratic Teachers' Union (Sadtu) says acts of Satanism and related crimes are on the rise in South African schools particularly in Gauteng and there needs to be more awareness about this.

On Sunday, school principals led by Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga joined faith-based organisations for a prayer service to address the problem.

In the most recent reported incident the bodies of two pupils were found in Dobsonville in Soweto with cuts on their hands and necks, two burnt black candles and razor blades were also found on the scene.

It's suspected the pair was killed as part of a satanic ritual.

Sadtu's Mugwena Maluleke says Gauteng appears to be the worst affected by these crimes.

“It’s a reality that it’s increasing in our schools so we need to wake up as a country and confront it with education as a tool to say to our people that this can’t go on.”

Cape Town - A network of sex workers controlled by a pimp involved in gangsterism and satanism has been uncovered in the Cape peninsula.

Through an investigation into an assassination in Strand two months ago, it emerged that the dark lord of Cape Town’s’s underworld goes by the alias The Priest. His real name is known to Weekend Argus. He allegedly heads the operation and is a satanist.

He is said to recruit and groom sex workers to perform satanic rituals – done behind closed doors, unbeknown to clients – which include drinking blood, usually that of animals.

The rituals form part of the gang’s customs.

Sources said The Priest was linked to the murder of 28s gang leader Nathaniel Moses, 32, also known as Nigga, in Strand in January.

In another twist in this bizarre case, allegations have surfaced a high-profile gang leader previously named a suspect in another underworld killing, ordered the hit on Moses. But a gang source who knew Moses this week denied Moses was linked to satanism or sex workers and insisted he had never heard of The Priest. He said Moses was in fact murdered after rival factions formed within the 28s.

Community Safety MEC Dan Plato told Weekend Argus the connection between gangsterism and satanism was a massive problem in Cape Town.

“The gangster and drug trade on the Cape Flats is closely linked to satanism. Youngsters we interview, that’s what they tell us.

“They’re groomed to kill, to see blood.”

Satanism and its links to crime were in the spotlight this week when 20-year-old Aljar Swartz was found guilty in the Western Cape High Court of beheading Lee Adams, 15, in Ravensmead three years ago. Swartz claimed he’d been under the control of Satan at the time.

Moses was shot at least six times in the head outside a car rental dealership in Main Road, Strand, on January 15. Police spokeswoman Constable Noloyiso Rwexana said: “A case of murder is still under investigation. No one has been arrested.”

But senior police sources, a gang source and another with close links to policing elaborated on the case, saying it had exposed intricate underworld dealings.Weekend Argus has also seen evidence of this. Moses was killed by two gunmen who walked up to his car and fired several shots at point blank range. He died at the scene. Moses, who at one stage owned a club in Strand which closed in December, was the gang boss of a faction of the 28s called The Mobsters. A police source said they had carried out hits for 28s gang kingpin George “Geweld” Thomas who was last year sentenced to seven life terms in jail.

Weekend Argus understands The Priest had been trying to take control of The Mobsters and that Moses’s murder may have paved the way. This is where the sex workers fit in. Two sources confirmed The Priest recruited sex workers who operated in areas including Voortrekker Road and Strand.

“The prostitutes are recruited and go through satanic rituals,” one said.

One source said men under The Priest went into various clubs recruited attractive women and took them to more upmarket clubs and lavished them with gifts. Eventually they were introduced to sex work and satanic rituals.

Two sources told Weekend Argus the hit on Moses was carried out by members of the Sexy Boys gang, which had a stronghold in areas including Belhar. The gang source said while he did not know about The Priest, there were rumours the Sexy Boys had offered R1 million to have Moses killed.

He said weeks before the murder, 28s gangsters were beaten up by Sexy Boys gangsters at a popular Bellville club.

The gang source said infighting in the 28s started a few months before the murder, when Moses had decided to forgive a woman he had a fallout with. This infuriated other 28s and caused some members to turn on Moses, who they denounced as their leader. Moses had received threats and changed his routine in an attempt to avoid ambush.

The gang source said Moses seemed to have known he was going be murdered and tried to turn his life around in the weeks leading up it. He was learning to play the guitar and be peaceful.

“What happened had to happen. That guy knew he was on his way out.” The second source confirmed this, saying women who tried to get out of the network went missing.

Members of the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce had not heard of sex workers involved in satanism.

Occult rites in the fear-filled ganglands

Occult practices started filtering into criminal gangs less than two decades ago.

Johan de Beer is a former head of the police’s occult-related crime unit in the Free State and the director of the Auksano trauma centre in Bloemfontein. He said the centre helps “victims of destructive subcultures” and he believed elements of witchcraft in Lesotho evolved, spread and became part of gang culture.

He told Weekend Argus that about two decades ago “evil churches,” headed by so-called kings and queens, had been set up there. “These jumped the border.” A more formalised gang known as the 666, whose members participated in “spiritually motivated crimes” which included blood sacrifices and murders, stemmed from this. De Beer said 666 members had become members of gangs, including the 26s and 28s and what they practised then spread.

“It became more violent and militaristic. It’s an emerging movement… Some 28s said: ‘We won’t stand for this.’ It resulted in prison fights four or five years ago.”

De Beer said there were many gang members in the Western Cape who followed devil-worshipping rituals. He said a number of killings, viewed as murders, were actually “blood sacrifices” they carried out.

<br>The fixation with the occult dates back to apartheid, writes Gavin du Venage in Cape Town<br>November 21, 2005<br><br><br>A CHURCH custodian is murdered in the dead of night and his mutilated corpse, bearing vicious stab wounds to his head and side mimicking those of Jesus Christ on the cross, is left in front of the altar.<br><br>On the ground, in the victim's blood, is written the word "Satun" (sic). <br><br>The Halloween slaying of 53-year-old Charles Jacobs, janitor at the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints in the quiet, church-going town of Paarl, east of Cape Town, is the latest in a long string of murders that reflect an obsession with Satanism that goes back deep into South Africa's apartheid past. <br><br>Jacobs's murder, inevitably dubbed the "crucifixion killing", was probably just a botched burglary, police say. But to relatives in the town, it was the work of the devil. <br><br>His brother, Ivor, who found the body, describes the scene at the church as "a place filled with evil. We saw a dark spot on the floor. The word 'Satun' was written in my brother's blood". <br><br>In South Africa, where murder is commonplace, the killing's satanic overtones made it exceptional. Official police denials of any occult link, and claims that descriptions of Jacobs's injuries were wildly exaggerated, have been drowned out. <br><br>To the police, the lurid crucifixion elements were nothing more than clumsy attempts to disguise the motives for the killing. <br><br>"The robbers who broke into the church probably did not expect to find anyone there," said police spokesman Billy Jones. <br><br>"It was just a robbery gone wrong. There was no occult involvement." <br><br>Two men have already been arrested: a defrocked priest whom Mormon elders fired after they discovered he had lied about being ordained, and a local unemployed man. <br><br>The "crucifixion killing" is only the latest to be proclaimed occult-linked and reflects the unique hold Satanism has on the South African psyche. In September this year, Willem Mouers, a deranged Western Cape farm worker, slit his three-year-old daughter's throat, hours after telling neighbours about "dark forces" that haunted him. <br><br>Unable to explain his mental breakdown, local residents turned to the only answer they believed would fit: that he was possessed. <br><br>When several pet dogs were slaughtered in an affluent Pretoria suburb in June, locals interpreted it as proof that a satanic coven was loose in the capital. <br><br>The fact that the pet killings took place at the winter solstice, a high point in the occult calendar, seemed the clincher. "Pets' death linked to Satanism" ran the headline in the Pretoria News. <br><br>The belief that malevolent dark forces lurk on the periphery, waiting to strike, runs deep in white South African society. Last year M Web, the country's largest internet service provider, offered a package that would allow users to block internet access to sites that included occult subjects. <br><br>The belief of lurking occultism goes back to the apartheid era when a blend of Christian fundamentalism and virulent anti-Communism fostered free-ranging paranoia, particularly among whites. In the 1980s, at the height of the liberation war, wandering preachers would visit all-white schools to warn children of the dangers of Satanism and, through a convoluted logic, its links to Communism. <br><br>Using props such as KISS album covers, candle stubs and other paraphernalia "recovered" from covens' lairs, these preachers would frighten and perhaps unintentionally titillate their captive audience with lurid descriptions of black mass, blood sacrifice and uninhibited sex. <br><br>Satanism was taken so seriously that the South African police set up an anti-occult unit. <br><br>The Occult Related Crime Unit was set up in 1992 under Superintendent Kobus Jonker. Jonker grew legendary as the country's top occult-hunter, dubbed in the press as "The hound of God", "God's detective" and "Donker (dark) Jonker". <br><br>The unit was disbanded in 1997 after human rights groups protested that the country's post-apartheid constitution guaranteed religious freedom, a definition broad enough to include Satanists, should they exist. <br><br>But the South African police have continued to keep a webpage devoted to Satanism and the occult, and Jonker is still the police's resident occult expert. <br><br>He declined to be interviewed. <br><br>An ex-colleague, James Lottering, a former detective who ran the occult unit's Eastern Cape branch and resigned after the unit's disbandment, still occasionally consults with his colleague. <br><br>These days, Lottering conducts exorcisms from a church in the coastal city of Port Elizabeth. He now calls himself a pastor but his bull neck, cropped hair and penetrating eyes make him seem far more like the cop he was than a man of the cloth. <br><br>"A normal policeman cannot really investigate these cases because he does not have the background. So they have consultants to help," he explained. <br><br>Building a case against a Satanist is challenging. "If a person commits a crime and says 'Satan made me do it', by law, that person must produce the demon to testify on his behalf in court. <br><br>"But that, of course, he cannot do. The court cannot take the word of every person that claims to be demon-possessed." <br><br>Instead, Lottering and his colleagues would settle for building a criminal prosecution but also sparing time to try and save the possessed man's soul. "If a person is demon-possessed, ja, I can help him free himself of this thing but I can't help him in court." <br><br>Lottering was also once a member of the apartheid Government's feared security police, when hunting Communists, not Satanists, was a priority. To some, the switch from hunting Communists to hunting Satanists is not surprising. <br><br>"The only thing worse than having an enemy is not having one," says University of the Witwatersrand psychologist Gavin Ivey, who has published a paper on the phenomenon. <br><br>"These guys are just a waste of taxpayers' money." <br><br>Dr Ivey points out that Satanism-seeking is an especially Afrikaans phenomenon, and points to a society long accustomed to using religion as its method of interpreting reality. <br><br>In the past, Communists were anti-church and therefore the legitimate, and hidden, enemy. <br><br>Today -- with Communists sitting as members of the post-apartheid parliament -- Satanists, real and imagined, are the new subversives. Dr Ivey said: "As one enemy disappears, another has to be conjured up." <br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START-->